The research for this post is making me a little sad. You see, even when searching through our pictures to find a shot for this article, I'm mourning the past. The photo above was taken two years ago this weekend. If you were able to look further down the windy road, you would see two great friends of ours who are no longer parading with us along Bottom Creek. But I imagine this year Archie Horton and Philip Hillery have met up somewhere far north of here, and are parading down streets of gold. I'm not one of those people who thinks that heaven will be a boring place where we will be itching to get off our clouds and hear something other than harp music; in fact, I think we will be enjoying each other's company and having a Christmas party EVERY day. But it's hard to imagine anything more fun than the annual Bent Mountain Tacky Tractor Christmas Parade this side of glory.
Warning, the whole shenanigans can be a bit irreverent. My daughter wrote about the parade and her let's just say....eccentric neighbors.... in essay form and was admitted into a very competitive northern college. I think they just wanted to have a look at her to see if she was sporting all of her teeth. Just kidding, she's a smart kid. You all know that. But the parade and said participants makes for very colorful essay fodder, if I do say so myself.
We started parading about 18 years ago. Emma was not yet one and Cameron about two and a half. It was a zillion degrees below zero. Emma insisted on removing her snow boots because that's what one- year- olds do to freak out their mothers. The parade originated when the Hortons and the Florins threw ratty tinsel and yard sale reject Christmas decorations (mostly blue of course) up on some old tractors with rickety old wagons hitched behind and took off down the road. The party soon grew to tractors and pickup trucks and Harleys and llamas. Yep. You heard me. We were written up in the Roanoke Times back in the day. They wanted to know the "parade route". HA. My eloquent husband replied "well, it all depends on whether you turn left or right after you leave the driveway." We've even had parade onlookers. That makes it more fun because we get to do the parade wave and jingle the bells. Most years we have had room for whatever parade spectators ventured up from the big city to become parade participants as we just threw them up on one of the "floats". We usually stop along the way and picnic and libate. Apparently I just made up that word but hmmm.....it seems fitting. Making merry and all.
This, it seems, is an open invitation. Bundle up, throw some tinsel on your ride and head up Bent Mountain (or across the mountain if you are coming from Floyd) on December 10th at 1PM. We will be meeting in our field on Bottom Creek Lane. You'll see us, believe me.
We parade this year in ridiculously fun memory of old friends.
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